1. Field of the Invention
One or more aspects of the invention generally relate to graphics processing, and more particularly to sharing a memory space between graphics adapters when multiple graphics adapters are installed in a system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional graphics processing systems designed to operate under the Windows® operating system (OS) and including more than one graphics adapter typically use one device driver for each graphics adapter, so there is a one to one correspondence between device drivers and graphics adapters. The Windows® OS permits each particular device driver to access only the memory space allocated to the graphics adapter corresponding to the particular device driver. Furthermore, a memory space allocated to one graphics adapter does not include any memory locations allocated to another graphics adapter.
Therefore, when multiple graphics adapters are available, a graphics software application must communicate with multiple drivers to distribute a graphics processing workload between more than one graphics adapter within a conventional graphics processing system. Rather than burden the graphics software application with the task of communicating with multiple graphics adapter device drivers, the communication may be more effectively managed by a single graphics device driver that is able to interface with multiple graphics adapters. Furthermore, when a single driver is used to interface with either one graphics adapter or with multiple graphics adapters, the graphics software application does not need to be aware of the number of graphics adapters available in the graphics processing system.
Accordingly, it is desirable to use a single device driver operating under the Windows® OS to interface between a graphics software application and multiple graphics adapters.